BHOPAL: Amid the possibility of ruling BJP fielding more sitting Lok Sabha members in the coming assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, seventh-time sitting MP and Union minister Virendra Kumar said he doesn’t want to contest assembly elections.
Talking to media recently in Chhatarpur district (which forms part of his Tikamgarh-SC Lok Sabha seat) about the possibility of him being fielded by the party in the Vidhan Sabha polls, the Union minister for social justice and empowerment said,
“BJP is an organisation, where it decides who will be fielded as candidates in the elections, spanning from civic polls to parliamentary polls. Many of the sitting MPs and Union ministers who have been fielded as candidates for the coming assembly polls wanted to contest the Vidhan Sabha polls. But I don’t desire to contest the assembly polls. The rest will be decided in the future,” he said.
Kumar has won the Lok Sabha polls seven times in a row from two separate seats from the Bundelkhand region, including Sagar (1996, 1998, 1999 and 2004) and Tikamgarh-SC (2009, 2014 and 2019).
He won the 2019 LS polls from Tikamgarh-SC seat by a margin of 3.48 lakh votes, which was 1.40 lakh more than the 2014 margin of 2.08 lakh votes. He had won the seat for the first time in 2009 by just 41,000-plus votes.
According to sources within the MP BJP, the possibility of Kumar being fielded from Bina-SC seat of his native Sagar district cannot be ruled out, particularly as the winning margin of the second-time sitting MLA Mahesh Rai shrunk to 732 votes in 2018 against 18,769 in 2013.